they are exactly the same, but am wondering if there are not some parrallels.

e.g. you could substitute '"a political belief that is based on irrationality is not necessary for the running of a society'"

Also for the last part of your post you could remove the word political and say '"It is not possible for society to exist without some kind of system'" the word political is extraneous in this context, or is it?

no, because by definition a political system is one used to organise a society.

re: '"a political belief that is based on irrationality is not necessary for the running of a society'" - you could say this but a political belief will - in theory - not be based on irrationality but people weighing up what they think 'society' should be and how to best go about that.

i think you need to define 'religion' in this case. people don't consider themself a christian or a muslim or w/e because they think that the religion in particular has a moral code that they think is best. well i guess a few people do but they are idiots. people follow the moral code because of something else, fear i guess.

e.g. you might have 'believed' that the lib dems were one thing, but the parchment their bible was written on was more worthless than loo paper.

Lib dems believed that if they preyed to nick clegg they would get a better country, i.e. what the voter believes in has almost nothing to do with the reality of what the political parties do.

Public discussion is waged over issues that mean far less to the actual divisions between the political parties, they have other differences and issues that are the main concerns, but seem content to wage a virtual political war on an (almost) entirely artificially constructed set of issues and debates in public, the agenda and level for these often being led/fed by the media

the participants have come to define the system, the manner, and what politics has come to mean, to society.

The participants have taken confrontational positions, even when they might agree. It is well known that many parties in opposition seem to NEED to object to things that we know full well they would also do if in power.

If the participants were sincere then politics would instead mean the people being able to assess what direction (given that there will be variation in conditions) they would like their society to go in.

The techniques employed by the participants to 'gain' political power, range from deliberately exagerating fears or virtues or weknesses, or intentions to merely gain the initial power.

Politics has come to mean the battle to wrest power and give to people that we 'vaguely' trust more (or has it?)

A lot of the 'system of government' is known to be carried on regardless by the civil service (or so some would have us believe) of course the elected politicians CAN and DO alter this, but how much? how many people iin this country know whether the bad decisions that a minister makes are because THEY made a bad decision or listened to the wrong advice from the civil service? its very difficult to tell and although ideally it would be nice to differentiate between the participants and the system, I feel it is too muddy to do that without missing much.

Does anyone feel that the extant democracies are 'God' to many people, in that they don't question its goodness or supremeness. (even though all people might want is an improvement on democracy, not a retrograde step). Whereas in the name of pure democracy we have a system that falls short of being true democracy, and yet to question what we have is tantamount to questioning the 'true' god of democracy.

does anyone have any thought on this much smaller politics/religeon comparrison topic?